What being a sniper taught Henry Becker about graphic design and life

SALT LAKE CITY — Henry Becker took a pretty nontraditional route to graphic design and higher education. He got there, he says, through his experience as a sniper in the Iraq War.

Becker said he grew up in Long Island, New York and Pennsylvania in a broken home.

During his senior year of high school, he said, his mother kicked him out of the house and he lived in his car in a Walmart parking lot.

Becker said he kept going to school, not because he thought education was important, but because he wanted the sense of community he got at school and because he thought he’d be arrested if he didn’t go.

After school, he said, he lacked direction and, motivated by the 9/11 attacks, enlisted in the Army.

“There (were) a lot of life skills that I learned (in the Army) that kind of set me up for success,” he said.

Becoming a team leader

Becker, whose only previous experience with firearms was being cut from his high school rifle team during tryouts, became a sniper team leader.

He said gathering intelligence on high-value targets and dangers in the battlefield, oddly enough, taught him skills he would later apply to graphic design.

“Who is it that you’re trying to target. You’re reading about who the person is, what they’ve done in life,” he said.

“You’re observing communities and you’re trying to find patterns that exist and then when patterns change it lets you know, that something’s going on in that community.

He said he does the same thing when he’s trying to help a client look for patterns in society and target an audience.

Becker said what really changed his life was a mistake he made — learning a better way to aim ahead of a moving target but not sharing it with everyone.

“I got yelled at for hours on end, got in trouble,” he said.

The greatest gift

“The greatest gift that you can give back to society is not your own accomplishments. It’s based on can you take that knowledge and can you try to influence as many people as you can with that knowledge? If you’ve kept it for yourself that seems to be a selfish act, not an Army value, which is a selfless act,” Becker said.

He said it’s because of that experience that he went to college — he was the first in his family to go — and now teaches graphic design at the University of Utah.

“One of the greatest accomplishments isn’t based on your own accomplishment, you know, if you win an award or get a contract,” he said. “But there’s no better feeling than seeing a student land their dream job or going to a competition and seeing a student win an award from work in your class.”

He said the teenage Henry Becker living in his car didn’t believe in himself but now he does.

“I think that one of the things that the military has really instilled in myself is that you have so much more in you,” he said.

“The problem is that we generally tend to be our own worst enemy, right? We let those family situations, we let living in our car affect us too much,” Becker said.

“If I could even speak to my younger self or younger audiences that are out there is that anything that you want in life that you would like to accomplish is within your grasp,” he said.